Giovanni Alberti (painter)

Giovanni Alberti (Rome, 1558–1601) was an Italian painter, known for his perspective painting (quadratura). He was also a poet and writer about art critic.

Giovanni Alberti
Born	19 October 1558  Sansepolcro
Died	10 August 1601  (aged 42) Rome
Occupation	Painter
Parent(s)	Alberto Alberti
Family	Alessandro Alberti, Cherubino Alberti

Biography

San Silvestro al Quirinale with frescoes by Giovanni Alberti and his brother Cherubino

The brother of Alessandro and Cherubino Alberti, and third son of Alberto, he was born at Borgo S. Sepolcro.^[1]

He went to Rome during the papacy of Gregory XIII, who employed him in the papal palace on Monte Cavallo, and in the Vatican. He excelled in painting landscapes and perspective, in which the figures were usually painted by Cherubino. He was also employed by Clement VIII, to paint the sacristy of St. John of Lateran, and, in conjunction with his brothers, to decorate the Sala Clementina in the Vatican. For this work, which was commenced in 1595 and completed in 1598, the two painters (Alessandro had died during the course of execution) received 3050 scudi.^[1] In the 1590s Giovanni and Cherubino painted frescoes in the Capella Maggiore of San Silvestro al Quirinale, where the complex perspectival effects include a trompe-l'œil oculus above the altar.^[2]

Alberti also worked in his native town, in Mantua, Perugia, Florence, and elsewhere. He died at Rome in 1601. His portrait is placed in the academy of St Luke, and another in the Uffizi at Florence.^[1]

References

1. Bryan 1886
2. Griswold, William; Simon, Linda Wolk (1994). Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 98. ISBN 9780870996887.

Sources

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Alberti, Giovanni". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol. I (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.